Littering is something small but it can bring much harm to our life. Maybe, we never realize that we produce trash every single hour or even every single minute. What will happen if all the people do not care about this problem and keep littering?
Based on the Health Ministry research, there are only 20% of Indonesian who has been aware of throwing trash in its place. It means that there are only 52.4 million people out of 262 million people who have been concerned with the problem. What will our environment be like in the future if more than 200 million Indonesian People keep littering? Right now, you can take a look at our roads, our rivers, and beaches. Are they free of trash? If we let this situation continues, our environment will be dirty, and messy. Moreover, our soil and water will be polluted by the trash and it will affect the environment, animals, and even human beings. Do you want to see our earth full of trash? Of course not. Therefore we have to change something in our life. We have to change not only our habits but also our mindset because reducing trash needs a struggle. We have to reduce the use of plastic, we have to recycle, and also reuse them. They sound easy but are hard to do. Therefore I list three important things we have to keep in mind in order to change the situation:
- Littering is a sin
If we keep in our heads that littering is a sin, it will make a big impact on our environment. We know that littering can cause a flood, disease, or even death of animals. If all the problems happen around us, they may be caused by you who litter every day. All religions always teach about cleanliness. If we make our environment dirty, it means that we break our religious teaching, isn’t it? Therefore, it is clear that littering is a sin. So stop littering!
- Littering is killing you
Littering does not only make the environment dirty but also harms human beings. Littering produces many kinds of trash. It can be organic or inorganic thrash. Organic trash does not make many problems compared to inorganic one. The inorganic trash that brings so many problems is plastic. Different from other kinds of trash, plastic is the hardest to parse by nature. It can stand more than a thousand years on this earth. It means that it will stay longer than the one who litters the plastic. Moreover, plastic brings much harm when turning into small pieces of plastic called “micro-plastic”. The bad news is we can find microplastic everywhere. It can be in the ground, in the river, and in the sea. Microplastic is dangerous to animals because it can be easily swallowed by them. The animals for example fish eating the microplastic contain the plastic in their body. What will happen if we eat food containing much plastic? Obviously, it will be something dangerous to eat. So stop littering! Start now because littering can kill you slowly.
- Trash produces a million problems
We know that trash can produce so many problems in our life. Because of trash, our environment looks dirty and messy. Even though you have thrown the trash in its place. The problem does not stop at this point because the trash we produce should be recycled or reused wisely. If trash is not treated this way, it can be a place for dangerous mosquitos, it can cause floods, and it can pollute our environment. Therefore, we should think that trash always produces a million problems in our life. Then start to reduce the trash in our daily life.
By RIKO ARFIYANTAMA, M.Pd.